by Amy Brent
I took in a deep breath, trying to settle myself, but two seconds later, I jumped up from my chair and ran across the room, sliding across the bathroom floor and making it there just in time. I threw up, feeling my body lurching and my head pounding. Sweat dampened my face, and I felt like I was going to die. I sat back on my legs and flushed the toilet, looking up as Gillian ran over to the bathroom door and looked down at me in concern.
“Oh my god,” she said. “Are you okay?”
“Maybe I spoke too soon about not getting sick,” I said, rubbing my throbbing temples.
She grabbed a paper towel and wet it for me. “Here. Wipe your forehead and neck.”
“Thanks.” I groaned, appreciating the coolness of the water on my forehead.
“What’s going on? Are you okay?” Greg poked his head around the corner. “You look terrible.”
“I feel terrible,” I said, shaking my head. “I don’t know what happened.”
“You should go home,” Greg said.
“No, there’s too much to do.”
“And you need to be at your best for it,” he said, cutting me off. “Seriously, it’s okay. We have time. The rush hasn’t started yet. Just go home and get some rest.”
“When did we switch places?” I laughed.
I wasn’t going to fight it. Whatever was going on, it was making me feel absolutely terrible. I was dizzy, my head had its own heartbeat, and my back was killing me. I just wanted to lie down and close my eyes, make the world stop wavering back and forth in my vision. On top of that, I had never been very fond of being sick in front of other people, especially since it didn’t happen so often. I hated the look on their faces, and I imagined them asking themselves if I was about to keel over or not. It wasn’t comfortable, and I only wanted to be alone to give my immune system a pep talk. Greg helped me up off the floor, and Gillian rushed over and packed the food back up, not wanting to set me off again.
“I’ll drive you home.” She put her arm around my waist. “Greg, there’s a boatload of Italian over there. Please eat whatever and take the rest to your family so it doesn’t go to waste.”
“Thanks, Gillian,” he said. “Lunch is on me next week. Emma, get better.”
“Will do, sir.” I gave him the thumbs-up as Gillian helped me out the door.
She drove me home and walked me slowly inside, helping me upstairs and out of my work clothes. Normally, I would cringe at someone helping me undress, but at that moment, I was grateful she was there. She tucked me into bed and brought several bottles of water up and a box of crackers.
“Drink water,” she said. “And call me if you need anything. I’ll text you later to see how you are.”
“Thank you, Gillian. You’re a lifesaver,” I said, smiling as much as I could.
When she left, I curled up into a ball on the bed and closed my eyes, wondering what in the hell I could have possibly caught.
Chapter 13
Brandt
I was in my office jotting down notes for the upcoming meeting. The AI we had been developing was ready for the testing phase, and it was a really huge deal. We wanted to make sure we crossed all of our t’s and dotted all of the i’s before we released the first version to the public. We knew they would sell like crazy, and we wanted their quality to be beyond company standards.
“There’s a package for you,” my secretary said over the intercom.
“Great, bring it on in,” I said, turning off the com.
She walked in, handed me the envelope, and smiled. I looked down at the packaging and got excited almost immediately. I had found a site online that would send me county records of residents living in Camden. I was hoping the information inside would give me some sort of clue to how I could find Emma. She still was the primary thing on my mind, but instead of continuing to fight it, I embraced it and let myself be okay with the idea of eventually putting all of it to rest. I had been searching for Emma for a month, calling Camden, looking for social media pages with similar names and towns, combing through their local yellow pages, but there still was no leads. I only had her first name and the name of the town she said she was from, which apparently wasn’t much. I had thought with that information and the fact that the town was so small, it would be a slam dunk, but it appeared people there were a little less willing to talk to me than I thought they would be. I guess it was strange to have a man calling about a woman who lived in their town and for him to not know more than her first name.
Standing on the balcony a month before, I had promised myself I would do everything I could to find her, no matter what resources it took or how long it took to do it. I didn’t even wait until the next day to start, diving right in and starting to look around. I had to admit, the search had become sort of an obsession, me taking most of my free time and after Sicily went to bed at night to look up anything I could think of that might help me find her. I had talked to one private investigator, but he said with the distance and the little information, the case wouldn’t be worth his time and effort. It was irritating, but I understood where he was coming from.
I finished up my notes for the meeting and then grabbed the envelope and opened it up. I pulled the stack of papers out and took my pen, going through each line carefully. I came to an Emma, but the birthdate put her somewhere in her seventies. That definitely wasn’t the woman who had been in my bed that night. I went line by line through every single page and then again, just to make sure I didn’t miss anything. I sat back in my chair and pulled my hands to my head, staring down at the envelope. There was nothing there, not one single Emma in the books. I asked myself if I had gotten the town wrong, but I was ninety-nine percent that I was right on the money from what she’d told me.
I grabbed the stack of papers and tossed it in the shred bin, sighing as I turned back to the computer. That had been the third company I had gone through and the third file I had received. All of them had been different with different names, dates, information, but not one single one of them had anything on the girl I had met a month before. I was coming up empty at every turn, and it was frustrating. Actually, it was more than frustrating. It was starting to feel absolutely hopeless. I had no real understanding of why the universe would reveal this girl to me and then lead me down a thousand dead-end roads trying to find her.
“Hey there,” Trevor said, walking into the room and sitting down. “Why do you look like your puppy just died?”
“It’s nothing,” I said. “Just another search coming up empty on Emma, that’s all. What’s up?”
“You’re still searching for this girl?”
“Yeah.” I clicked off my computer screen and leaned back in my chair.
“Dude, seriously, this is getting a little ridiculous,” he said. “I supported you at the beginning thinking you would do a little Google search, maybe call around and then be done with it. You’re chasing a ghost, man, and I think you’re doing it to keep your mind off actually going out there and finding an actual girl.”
“I told you I wanted to see this through,” I said. “And I’m not chasing a ghost, trust me. I had her in my fucking hands. I’m not avoiding finding another woman. I just want to make sure this gets out of my head before I start trying.”
“It should already be out of your head, dude,” he said. “She left and didn’t leave any way to contact her. Obviously, you were a lot of fun on vacation, and that was it. I don’t mean to be harsh, but someone has to say it to you eventually.”
“Thanks for the advice,” I said, picking up my jacket and briefcase. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Where are you going?”
“I’m taking a half day,” I said. “See you at the meeting tomorrow.”
I left the office and jumped in the town car, heading back to my apartment. I needed to clear my head, get my mind straight about all this stuff. When I got home, I changed into some comfortable clothes and grabbed a beer from the fridge. I went down into the living room and sat down on the couch,
leaning back and closing my eyes. Maybe Trevor had a point. I had been at this nonstop for a month and still wasn’t any closer to finding this girl than I was the day she’d left. Maybe I was chasing a pipe dream, hoping for something I knew I would never find. Emma had run out of this house in the middle of the night without one single word. Trevor had pointed it out, and I couldn’t ignore it. If she had wanted me to find her, to contact her, she would have left a note, a phone number, her last name even. But she hadn’t. She had dipped out and left me here wondering if I was losing my mind or not.
I had spent so much time tossing away phone numbers from women that it was crazy I was now hunting one down like a nutbag. Maybe karma was having a heyday with me, getting back at me for passing up women who actually were interested in me, calling them back, and taking them out. Before I could think any more about it, the front door opened, and Sicily came bolting in the house, stopping and smiling big at seeing me on the couch. She ran over and jumped in my lap, squeezing me around the neck.
“What are you doing home?”
“I just wanted a half day, that’s all.” I kissed her on the cheek. “But act like I’m not here and go do your homework.”
“All right,” she sighed. “I love you.”
“I love you too,” I said, watching her run into her room and close the door.
My mom walked in and set her stuff down on the table, looking over at me and smiling. She had picked up Sicily from school and brought over food to make for dinner, figuring it would be another late night at work. I had been working a lot of late nights recently between the search for Emma and the new project coming out. She walked over and plopped down on the couch next to me, handing me the mail.
“I’m happy to see you home,” she said. “Though you don’t look happy to be home.”
“I am.” I took in a deep breath. “I want to tell you about something. On Valentine’s Day, I met a girl, a girl who made my world stop. When I woke up the next day, she was gone and didn’t leave any note or any way of finding her. I tried to let it go, but I couldn’t, so after a couple weeks of torturing myself, I decided to try to find her.”
“Any luck?”
“No,” I said. “A month of trying and no luck at all. Trevor said I’m chasing a ghost, and I need to get my head back here instead of looking for some girl.”
“Is that how you feel?”
“I don’t know.” I sighed. “No, that’s not how I feel. I made myself a promise that I would find her and either something would come out of it, or I would put it to bed. I’m getting frustrated and tired though.”
“I think if this girl and this search is in your heart, then that is what you need to follow,” she said. “Your brain will always try to take the easy route. You know that. It’s harder to follow your instinct but so much more rewarding in the end. I haven’t seen you this happy in a really long time. At least not when you’re going about your everyday actions. Actually, I take that back. I have never seen you this happy about something. When you just talked about her, I saw a twinkle in your eye, a twinkle. That is the same thing I saw in your father’s eye every time he came to pick me up for a date. The same thing I saw when he said, ‘I do.’ That is something really special, Brandt. That is what I was talking about when I said the life-changing kind of love.”
“I know,” I said, smiling. “I just don’t know when I’m supposed to say enough is enough and put it away. I don’t want to be doing this when I’m seventy.”
“You’ll know when enough is enough,” she said. “But as long as that twinkle is still there, you still have more in you. I’ve seen a sense of motivation and determination in you that has been gone since Josie up and left, probably even before that. I’ve seen that take effect of your business life, your personal life, and everything between. Whoever this girl is, she lit a fire under your ass, and I want to meet her so I can personally thank her for that.”
“She’s an amazing woman,” I said, smiling. “At least she was that night. I don’t know why, but I feel like I’m being drawn to her. It’s like a force I can’t control.”
“And let me guess, no matter how hard you try to force it out of you, it keeps coming back,” she said.
“Even stronger,” I replied, laughing. “She’s everywhere I look, in everything I do, and I don’t want to let go of it yet.”
“Then don’t,” she whispered. “When you find her, no matter what happens, you’ll be glad you stayed the course.”
“I hope so,” I said, looking out the window. “Because if I don’t, I might regret it the rest of my life.”
Chapter 14
Emma
I always hated going to the doctor and tried to limit my visits to my yearly wellness exam. There were too many scary posters and sharp needles for me, and I was not happy to be sitting there. I had to do it, though. It had been almost a week, and I still felt as bad as the first day I went home sick. I still was barely keeping down water and food was a happy thought in the background. I felt absolutely horrible, and my head continued to pound, even as I sat on the examination table waiting for the doctor. I swung my feet back and forth reading the magazines they left in there. Finally, the doctor arrived.
“Emma,” he said. “It’s good to see you, though maybe not under these circumstances.”
“Dr. Holden.” I smiled at him despite my aversion to visiting the doctor. “Good to see you too.”
“So, let’s talk about what’s going on with you.” He sat on the rolling chair and looked up at me.
“All right. A week ago from Saturday, I started getting headaches. They were mild at the beginning of the day, but as time progressed through the day, they would become more of a pulsing nightmare,” I said. “I also have a tension or tightness in my lower back, and sometimes I can’t even lie comfortably in the bed. Last Tuesday, I threw up, and from that moment on, I felt like I was living in stomach flu hell. I can’t keep anything but water down, and that is even iffy sometimes.”
“That sounds miserable,” he said, making notes. “What I’d like to start with is some simple bloodwork, and then we will go from there, okay?”
“Okay,” I said, smiling at the nurse entering the room.
She took my blood and put a bandage on my arm before smiling and walking out. See, sharp things and scary circumstances, just what I always try to avoid. I thought about my life as I waited for the doc again, about how everything had been moving forward, but now I was back in a standstill. I needed a change, something to break everything up, force my life to take a better turn. I looked up as the doctor walked back in.
“I just have a couple of really quick questions for you that weren’t asked before,” he said.
“Okay, shoot.”
“Are you in a monogamous relationship?”
“No, I’m single.”
“When was the last date of intercourse for you?”
“Oh, uh, Valentine’s Day, I guess,” I said, a little embarrassed.
“Okay, I’ll be back in a few minutes,” he said. “We’re running the blood test here to get the results faster so I can at least treat you for the nausea. We need you to keep food and water down, and we don’t need you getting dehydrated. It’ll make all your symptoms worse.”
“Okay,” I said, watching him walk from the room.
Those were strange questions, not normal for a visit with my doctor. I guessed with the way the world was going and the opportunity to explore all reasoning for my illness, they were necessary. Or maybe they were routine at this point. I wouldn’t know. I came for my once a year physical, never had any complaints, and usually was in and out within about a half an hour. The fact that they could send your blood to get read immediately was news to me, but they did it in the hospital, so why not in a facility like the one I was in? Everything had been moving toward efficiency in my town recently, so it only made sense.
I tried to keep the nerves in my chest from taking over. It would only make me feel worse. After about fi
fteen minutes, the doctor knocked and entered. I put the magazine down and straightened up, watching him walk through the room reading some papers in my files. He closed the file and sat down on the stool, putting on some gloves like always and scooting toward me. My stomach dropped as I watched him, his face extremely serious. What in the world could he have found out that quickly that could cause him to change his demeanor so much? God, what if there was something really wrong with me?
“Your blood sample showed some great results,” he said. “Your vitamins are perfect, your hydration is great, and your electrolytes aren’t terrible for you being as sick as you are.”
“That’s good news,” I said. “So, it’s just the flu, and it will go away?”
“No.” He put his hands in front of him. “Emma, you’re pregnant.”
“Funny,” I said, laughing. “I see you have the same sense of humor as your dad. Seriously, though, what’s up? Do I need a prescription or just let it run its course?”
“I’m not joking, Emma.” He opened my file. “To me, it looks like you’re a little over a month along, so your V-Day event brought you more than just roses and chocolate.”
“Holy shit.” I immediately covered my mouth. “I’m sorry. That slipped out. How could this have happened? I mean I know how it happens but I …”
